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Monday, March 8, 2010

BBA Challenge Bread #36 — Stollen

No, you're not reading that title incorrectly or have slipped into a time warp and missed about eight breads. I finally got a chance to get back to BBA baking and am at the sourdough section. I didn't plan enough ahead and my starter wasn't ready. I'd neglected the poor thing and it needed lots of feedings and attention. While that was happening, I skipped past the sourdough section and landed on Stollen. And oh, what a landing.

I'm baking my way through Peter Reinhart's award winning book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, along with a number of other amateur bakers (I'm not sure how many are still with us, and a few have finished!). Want to join in the madness, or just learn more about this semi-crazy undertaking? Check out the following links:

Stollen is an celebration bread, this time from Germany. We've baked a few other celebration loaves, including Artos, the Greek celebration bread, and Panettone, the Italian Christmas bread. I loved the Artos bread and will definitely make it again. After all, Easter is just around the corner. I didn't love the Panettone. It was just OK, but thought about giving it another shot.

Until I made Stollen. Like Panettone, Stollen begins with booze-soaked fruit, but they become distinctly different after that.

For one thing, this stollen comes togther very quickly–for a yeast bread, at any rate. It's a one day bread (not counting the fruit soaking) that mixes, proofs and bakes in about 4 hours. Trust me, that's lightning fast.

I started the fruit on Friday night. I decided to used orange extract and rum. It was cheap rum, but it's what we have. What can I say, we don't have snooty taste buds in this house. I mixed up the bread on Sunday, so the fruit had plenty of time to soak up all the flavor and plump up nicely.

The shaping was tricky. I read and re-read the directions and couldn't quite figure out how what was described was what was shown in the book. I went by description, and it ended up being a pretty basic letter fold. You add extra fruit plus slivered almonds to the folds, bend it into a crescent then let it proof about an hour.

After baking, you immediately brush with butter. When I was doing some research on Stollen, I read where someone brushed with butter, sprinkled with powdered sugar, then repeated both, creating a much "crustier" sugar coating. I gave it a shot and it worked great.

I love this shaker. I have one for powdered sugar and one for flour. It's perfect for dusting cake pans.

I thoroughly enjoyed this bread. I keeps a long time because of the booze (nice) and gets better through the week. I loved it so much that I made another half batch this weekend. This time, I soaked the fruit in triple sec. WOW! Excellent flavor and none of the in-your-face alcohol flavor that the rum had on the first day (although it did mellow after the second day).

I even got the shaping right! Turns out the shaping is more of an accordion fold than a letter fold. Man, I miss being able to take my food photos in natural light. Doesn't this look about a bazillion times better than the others?

If you like panettone or other celebration breads, I sincerely hope you give stollen a shot. It's SO worth it!

Phyl- I read about your dog. Tragic and funny at the same time. I saw one of our cats eyeballing the bread and immediately thought of you. Needless to say, I'm not letting the cats anywhere NEAR that bread!

Cathy - Thanks! The double butter-sugar combo is great. It'll turn into paste when you put on the second layer of butter, but a healthy dose of sugar will cover it!

Sally - Thanks! The spoons are from Target, I think and the shaker is Pampered Chef. Love them!

Very awesome bread. I brought this to a late Christmas party which was super convenient because Stollen is a Christmas bread here in Germany. However, it is held in the same esteem as the fruitcake has in the States. I, however, could eat it every day.

YUM! Looks great. I couldn't figure out the shaping instructions either, but I used my stollen tin for one loaf and tried the original stollen shaping for the other loaf which wasn't perfect - but hey, there are going to be a lot more X-mases I can practice it for.

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